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The Beatles: 50 years later: The Beatles never performed in Iowa, but The Fab Four still cast a large shadow across the state.

The Beatles, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, have their hair combed by stylists on the set of their first movie production, "A Hard Day's Night," at Twickenham Film Studios in Middlesex, outside London, England, on March 12, 1964. The hair stylists, who had parts in the film, are Patti Boyd (from left), 19, Tina Williams, 17, Pru Bury, 22, and Susan Whitman, 17. / The Associated Press

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On Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles made their U.S. debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Their legacy lives on as Iowans young and old continue to be influenced by the band. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com/beatles for an even bigger Beatles experience. GALLERIES

See hundreds of photos of band members, Beatles landmarks and memorabilia. Also, check out reader-submitted photos of Iowans posing on Abbey Road. INTERACTIVES

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Another sure sign of rampant Beatlemania in 1964 in Iowa arrived later that year with the release of the Beatles’ first (and most acclaimed) film, “A Hard Day’s Night.”

The black-and-white musical was scheduled to premiere in conventional indoor theaters in August.

A downtown Des Moines theater owner contacted local radio station KIOA with a scheme: He had the “drive-in rights” to the movie. Why not show it the night before it premiered on all the other screens? Pack fans into the Pioneer Drive-In on Southeast 14th Street in Des Moines (formerly at 2099 S.E. 14th St.)?

Peter McLane, who still lives in Des Moines and was program director at KIOA at the time, called it the “first hard-ticket advance sale to a drive-in premiere in the United States.” (Drive-ins were still big business in the ’60s as teens jammed as many of their friends as possible into their car trunks to avoid paying admission. McLane, 75, worked at KIOA from 1963 to 1977, moved out of state and eventually returned to Des Moines where he retired in 2005.)

KIOA agreed to sell the movie tickets and help hype the early drive-in premiere into a spectacle.

“I came down to the office at about 8:30 before the doors were open,” McLane said of the morning that tickets went on sale at the KIOA studios.

“About two blocks in every direction there were people lined up to buy them.”

McLane and his fellow KIOA jocks at the premiere stood in front of some 400 cars and hundreds more fans that had poured out of them. They stood atop the projection booth that night and tossed T-shirts into the throng of Beatlemaniacs.

That same year, KIOA had four life-sized photos of the Beatles set up behind its disc jockeys in the studio, visible from the street through the big plate-glass windows.